In the Country of the Blind

By Michael Flynn

Book Overview

In the nineteenth century, a small group of American idealists managed to actually build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and use it to develop Cliology, mathematical models that could chart the likely course of the future. Soon they were working to alter history's course as they thought best. By our own time, the Society has become the secret master of the world. But no secret can be kept forever, at least not without drastic measures. When her plans for some historic real estate lead developer and ex-reporter Sarah Beaumont to stumble across the Society's existence, it's just the first step into a baffling and deadly maze of conspiracies.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076534498X
• ISBN13: 9780765344984
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Asimov's Second Foundation on the Net

I love conspiracy and alternative history books. Here we have a secret society like Asimov's Second Foundation moving in a net-connected Earth (like our own). This book is all "Cryptonomicon" wanted to be.It's all on the uncanny coincidences and turning points of history, on how tiny little changes make momentous differences in the long term, as predicted by chaos theory...and humanity caught in history whirlwind. Recommended...

Between Generas

Michael Flynn is one of the people (along with Lois McMaster Bujold and Spider Robinson) that I consider the sucessor to Robert A. Heinlein (and yes, it takes at least three people to fill Heinlein's shoes). I was very glad to see that his first novel, In the Country of the Blind, was going to be back in print (will his short story collection, Werehouse, be following I hope I hope I hope).This novel never got the respect...

A terrific "thinking man's" novel . . .

One of the usually less successful types of science fiction story (in my opinion) is the "secret history" story, in which the plot turns on events that most of us don't know about -- things we aren't *supposed* to know about, secret things that allow some individual or group to (usually) rule the world. Generally, the key events or relationships that give the secret group its power are a little too pat, a little too coincidental,...

The Best Science Fiction Book Which Cannot Be Bought

I am currently re-re-re-reading "In the Country of the Blind" (which was published in the early 90s) and it impresses me yet again.The subject is the construction of Babbage's difference engine in the mid-1800s, and the existence of "societies" which develop the science of forecasting a full century in advance of what has happened in (our) timeline. The development of the book is brilliant and as complex as the subject...